…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Recent Student Projects From My Theory Of Knowledge Class

As regular readers know, in addition to teaching Beginning and Intermediate English Language Learners English and Social Studies, I also teacher mainstream ninth-grade English classes and an International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge class (and it looks like I’ll be teaching two TOK classes next year!).

In addition to IB Diploma candidates, I heavily recruit other students that are not taking other IB courses, including students who have previously been in my ELL classes.

I thought readers might be interested in some recent projects we’ve done there, and you can see more at our TOK class blog.

After we study each individual Way of Knowing and Area of Knowledge, small groups create posters and make short presentations that usually include:

* What they think the three most important things they’ve learned are and why they’re important.

* A picture they draw along with an explanation of how it’s connected to the WOK or AOK.

As TOK teachers know, IB added several new Ways of Knowing and Areas of Knowledge to the curriculum this year. I’m finding it difficult to fit them all in, so, for two of the new ones — Religious Knowledge Systems and Indigenous Knowledge Systems — we just spent three days each studying each one.

Taking some questions directly from the new TOK Guide, I had students work in small groups, providing a number of links to resources, and had them develop a short slideshow and presentation using this outline:

What is this Area of Knowledge about?

What practical problems can be solved by applying this knowledge?

What makes this Area of Knowledge important?

Show the connections at least three Ways of Knowing have to this Area of Knowledge.

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3 Comments

Hello Larry,
I am wondering about the ages of your ToK students. I teach ToK as a bilingual class at a Dutch high school, outside of the IB programme (they do follow IB English.) I teach in year 11, as the exam classes in year 12 may not be ‘overburdened’. I want to start a module for year 10 next year, what do you think? Looking at your students’ poster work, it seems very possible. They also follow the philosophy of science in that year and we hang Bloom’s in the classrooms, so critical thinking is not new to them.
thanks!

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My Second Book On Teaching ELLs

My book, "The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide: Ready-to-Use Strategies, Tools, and Activities for Teaching English Language Learners of All Levels," (co-authored by Katie Hull Sypnieski) was published in the Summer of 2012